This invention relates to an apparatus for stacking and conveying wafer-like articles, particularly baked confectionery items, such as cookies, crackers, biscuits or the like. The apparatus includes a supply conveyor on which the articles are supported in a flat-lying orientation and are advanced in a column of undetermined length to a downwardly-curving track adjoining the supply conveyor. The articles are lifted off the curved track by a stack-forming device and moved into a face-to-face contact with the outermost article of a stack under formation.
An apparatus of the above-outlined type is described, for example, in United Kingdom Patent No. 2,044,230, wherein a column of articles which are delivered from a continuous baking oven in a flat-lying and irregularly spaced orientation, is transformed into a stack of face-to-face engaging articles which are further advanced to a conveyor belt. In this operation the articles are brought almost into a vertical orientation on a curved track and are, by means of a constantly rotating toothed stacking wheel, set against the trailing end of an earlier-formed, horizontally oriented stack. This apparatus involves problems if consecutive articles have a too small or a too large spacing from one another. In the former case, the stacking step is interfered with, whereas in the latter case, the stacking wheel frictionally engages the trailing article of the stack for an excessive period.
Between the known apparatus and a packing machine the articles are conveyed and temporarily stored in the usual manner over conveyor tracks of significant length. Upstream of the packing machine the continuous stack is divided into groups and the groups further monitored, for example, by weighing. In these additional manipulations, risks are high that particularly the edges of the delicate articles are damaged.